Review: The Architecture of Modern American Synagogues, 1950s–1960s

The Architecture of Modern American Synagogues, 1950s–1960s offers a useful overview for the lay reader of what could be termed Jewish architecture from the specific perspective of an architect examining the physical aspects of these buildings. The book also takes a first step toward considering the contemporary afterlives of these modernist worship spaces in a scholarly context.

In seven chapters, Anat Geva provides a contextual framework, followed by case studies illustrating related synagogue design concepts. She maps out important markers of modern American synagogue design before highlighting buildings that “push the envelope.” Finally, Geva adds a thoughtful dimension to her study by examining how these buildings have been adapted over time to meet changing needs and demands—both corporeal and spiritual. Reminding the reader that she is assessing worship spaces with their own requirements beyond building codes and HVAC systems, Geva begins each chapter with an epigraph quoting a biblical proverb.

Geva applies three criteria in choosing her case studies: first, the synagogues had to be designed by prominent architects whose work exemplified aspects of the U.S. modern architectural movement; second, they had to have been built in the 1950s and 1960s; and finally, they had to still be in use. Geva concentrates on synagogues designed by Frank Lloyd Wright (building on her own scholarship on the architect), Pietro Belluschi, Percival Goodman, Sidney Eisenshtat, Erich Mendelsohn, and Minoru Yamasaki. Although she maintains her focus on the synagogues that meet her criteria to highlight aspects of American synagogues in the mid-twentieth century, she also provides an expansive background for these buildings and their communities by covering Jewish religious life and societal culture over the span of centuries.

Given the complexity of such a project, Geva begins by visualizing her goals through a Venn diagram in which the synagogue sits in the center. The overlapping contextual frameworks that she addresses in proceeding chapters are religious/cultural (Jewish identity), location (American suburbs), and design concepts (modern architecture). In a sweeping review, Geva analyzes three major forces or movements that have shaped Jewish identity—namely, the Enlightenment, anti-Semitism, and Zionism—for their connection to synagogue design. She interprets the European Enlightenment in the American value of freedom of religion that Jews welcomed as a guarantee of their belonging in American society. She describes the role of anti-Semitism as galvanizing, with synagogues built in affirmation of Jewish continuity. Design choices made by synagogue building committees in the years after the formal establishment of the state of Israel reflected the new balance American Jewry had to achieve as both a people and a nation within a nation.

Turning toward an analysis of the physical structures that manifested these multifaceted identities, Geva details the basic definition of a synagogue, beginning with biblical descriptions and the functions and features of the synagogue from antiquity to the present. With an architect’s eye, she introduces three concepts central to the design of a synagogue: the orientation of the ark and bimah (the space, often raised, from which the religious services are conducted), the reliance on flexible space, and the inclusion of art in the building’s interior and exterior. Geva identifies three key features of modern American synagogue design: the modernization of “Jewish cathedrals” (i.e., the heritage of large nineteenth-century European synagogues), the rejection of historicism, and the creation of a specifically American synagogue through connections with symbols of the American landscape and democratic values. She uses case studies to elaborate on each of these three developments. Throughout, she also broadly explains the appearance of modern architecture among American synagogues as a projection of Jews’ confidence in their firm place in American society. She identifies the urge for belonging as the motivation behind congregations’ hiring of prominent American modernist architects.

Geva briefly addresses the ways in which the three primary denominations—Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform Judaism—differ ideologically and theologically, and how these differences have interfaced with synagogue architecture. Referencing the denominational affiliations of the synagogues she discusses, she describes the way that these developments manifested in individual buildings. However, in a missed opportunity to further explore the design decisions made by Jewish subcultures, Geva does not ask why these congregations chose modernism as the style for their new buildings. The denominational identity of a congregation is an important factor in profiling American synagogue design, and the well-known architects whose work Geva examines were hired by consensus of the people who would use the buildings. In making this choice, congregations invested in modernism as an appropriate expression of their Judaism as well as their place in American society.

Although many of the synagogues built in the United States in the 1950s were affiliated with Reform Judaism, other denominations chose modern architecture as well. Sons of Israel (Davis, Brody & Wisniewski, 1963) in Lakewood, New York, is an example of a traditionally observant Orthodox congregation that engaged a modernist idiom for their worship space, perhaps against expectations that a more conventional building aesthetic would be chosen. Furthermore, this congregation commissioned modernist pieces from renowned master silversmith Ludwig Wolpert to adorn their synagogue’s interior. At the time of the synagogue building boom, a discourse emerged around the design of Jewish ritual objects; this was often notable in Reform congregations’ choices to engage modern architecture for worship spaces while retaining historical iconography and formats for ritual objects such as kiddush cups or Hanukkah lamps. It would have been informative to know Geva’s viewpoint on denominational affiliation in design choices.

The specific architect’s perspective that informs this book is valuable, and it is ultimately brought to bear in the final two chapters, which represent Geva’s contribution to this area of research. She addresses building technology as a component of modern design in synagogues as well as the afterlives of these synagogues with the passage of time. Geva draws attention to the fact that adaptation of these buildings has been a regular occurrence, with changes sometimes enhancing their aesthetic qualities and sometimes eroding the integrity of their designs. These alterations reflect a restless demographic seeking both tradition and change, congregations that inadvertently inherited the desires of their grandparents, who sought a similar intersection when commissioning these modern worship spaces.

The reference list in this book constitutes a resource unto itself. Geva pulls together foundational writings on Jewish synagogue architecture from the period such as works by Peter Blake and Erich Mendelsohn as well more recent studies from the past five to twenty years. As this book shows, this subject is slowly receiving new attention, where before it was largely embedded in chapters and footnotes of volumes dedicated to twentieth-century church architecture. Geva’s previous contributions, including her most recent work on Frank Lloyd Wright’s synagogue design, reflect this trend.

With the title of this book indicating a narrowly defined subject—aesthetic, location, the ethos of a single decade, and a worship space used by a sliver of the American population (certainly in the 1950s and 1960s, but currently as well)—the reader might expect a deep dive. Toward her goal, reflected in the title, Geva successfully works “to decipher and add new dimension to how modernism influenced the design of mid-twentieth-century American synagogues” (16). Along the way, she provides the reader with a broad contextual framework for understanding the nature of the synagogue as a sphere of Jewish life.